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Wednesday, February 03, 2010

The Birth of a Campaign (hopefully) or How to K.I.S.S.

I mentioned that I've been working on getting a game of Mutant Future going. This will be my wife's first real taste of RPG's. The closest she's come so far is a session of old school Hero Quest. She enjoyed it, but we didn't get to play a second dungeon and she was wanting to continue playing her elf. She's always balked at playing in the past since she thinks "my games are too complicated". That's why I'm going for Mutant Future. It's pretty wild and crazy, nothing too serious, and it's easy to play. I would really like to play some Star Wars Saga, but the Saga system, while easy to play and run for those that are old hat at this sort of thing, may be a little too much to throw her way. I would like her to focus more on the game rather than having to add up modifiers and such.

I have an idea for the game in mind. It will start off in what's left of Marshall (or M'shall as it's called in the post apocalyptic future), the town were we're going to be. It's a rarity in the wastelands in that it counts many species as citizens from pure humans, to replicants, to mutants. All in all not a completely horrible place to live in the wastelands. M'shall is in trouble. Drought has set in on the one fertile land. The food stores are drying up, people are getting sick, and to top it off slavers have picked up on this and have doubled their efforts to take the town down. The players (my wife and 2 or maybe 3 others) are picked to go on a mission to find a G.E.C.K. (yeah, I'm ripping off Fallout), which will help to ensure the town's survival. Supposedly, one was delivered to the vault in KayCee, far to the West, but no one knows if it was ever used or not.

Not too shabby. It's pretty basic stuff, but hopefully it will hook the players enough to go on the quest for the G.E.C.K. and lay the foundation for crazier stuff to come. My main problem, which has been a problem since my days of playing AD&D, it that I'm trying hard to force myself to Keep It Simple, Stupid. I tend to over-plan campaigns, detail stuff that my players will likely never encounter, and then almost get burned out on the game entirely before even sitting down to play. I'm trying hard to just go in with a barebones approach like back when I first sat down with Hero Quest or Basic D&D back in the day. I need to realize that the Devil is the details and just go in with a mind to focus on the fun. I'm not writing some grand epic, I'm playing a game with those I love. Keep it loose, keep it fun. It is hard though. I looked through some of my old Rifts and Darwin's World material and ideas are flowing, but I need to just let the game go where it will.